


sky within your eyes

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Boys Having Feels, Brother-Sister Relationships, Chill XV, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Gladio has a Crush, Introspection, Male Friendship, Schoolboys, Timeline What Timeline, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, non-timeline-compliant, teenage introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 18:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12636933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Gladio thinks this might be the first time he ever sees Ignis clearly.(Thanks to Iris, even if she's a baby and doesn't have a clue as to what her brother's feeling.)





	sky within your eyes

Rain in its crash and its cry, outside, as he jogged through the soft susurrus of wind-whispering echoes, down corridors that, overhead, vanished far into the pointed arches of the Citadel and all of its satellite structures: and the windows, here, held against the cry of the wind and the squall beating down outside, enough that even as he ran past the beaten bushes he could see the deep holes of raindrops striking soft dark soil.

Squeak of his shoes on the tiled floors, and trails of sweat down the back of his neck, and he took easy deep breaths and threw himself into the next high-intensity interval, shoulders and hips burning with the way he moved his arms and his legs. Maximum running speed for exactly ninety seconds, pushing himself as hard as he could, and he counted, and breathed hard, and when he hit ninety-one he consciously swallowed around the roar of the rush in his veins, and slowed down to the brisk jog, again.

He would have been training outside if he hadn’t been looking at a solid two weeks’ worth of midterm examinations, and no less than two oral exams, and he was looking forward to the one in his literature class and he was not looking forward to the one in his history class. No point in getting sick now: but running on tiles was so different from running on the track.

Alarm, pinging high and insistent from his pocket, and Gladio slowed down to a trot, and the corridors wound back to the place where he had started, near the smallest of the locker rooms: his rucksack next to that doorway and a change of clothes, not to mention an outlet where he could charge his mobile phone. 

Steam rising around him as he took a shower, and -- he smelled something familiar, as he dug a fresh set of socks out of his bag.

A clear bottle with a pattern of child-drawn clouds around the bottom, cartoonishly fluffy, pink and blue outlines. 

He had to laugh, and check his mobile phone, because if he was carrying a bottle of made-up infant formula, then there was somewhere else he needed to be.

Right on cue, soft _brr brr brr_ of the phone ringing: and he hit Answer and said, “Put her on, come on.” 

“I remembered that you were going to train this morning, and so I won’t be bothering you to come back,” he heard his father say. 

Inquisitive burbling, blurring out the edges of his voice, and Gladio grinned helplessly. 

“Dad,” he said.

“Here’s Iris,” was the reply.

Burp and giggle and a quiet rising coo.

“Hey you,” Gladio said. “I took one of your bottles with me. Accident, swear. I promise I’ll bring it back. Be good for Dad, huh?”

“Ppa!”

He laughed, and so did Clarus on the other end of the line. “Opinions, Dad, she’s having them already,” he said.

“I can only look forward to it. Now back to your work,” was the fond reply. “I have things well in hand here.”

“Gotcha.”

And even after he’d showered and changed, Gladio thought he could still catch it: the smell of milk lingering on his sleeve, the soft leaf-scent of baby blankets. Fuzz on the cuff of his hoodie, from a lacy bright-yellow cap. 

Fortunately he was alone in the corridors and there was no one to stare at the smile he wanted to show off and wanted to keep secret at the same time, the smile he always pointed in the direction of his little sister, the smile he needed to respond to her with. 

Bittersweet presence of her lovely toothless grin.

His father was still wearing the mourning band, although he kept it beneath his armor now.

Gladio still expected to turn the corner toward his bedroom to catch the sweetly rising song of his mother, the last lingering trace of her in the house now that the funeral wreaths and candles had been put away.

In her place, the shadows of Iris’s eyelashes fluttering in her infant’s sleep, long on her round cheeks.

In her place, Iris’s voice rising and rising in her little wails, in her infant’s rising and falling moods.

In her place, the shadows growing longer and somehow lighter in Clarus’s face as he took on his share of things like -- changing dirty nappies. Midnight-hour feedings. Rapt breathless contemplation of the dimples deepening in Iris’s cheeks.

Gladio wanted to call his mother’s name.

He said Iris’s instead.

He wanted to tell Iris he liked to sit up with her even when he was supposed to be doing other things, even when he didn’t know what to do whenever she cried.

Strange how that sent his thoughts spiraling toward the boy in the black shorts, the boy who smiled with such odd hesitation, bright eyes falling into crinkled corners -- 

Maybe he could try to talk to Noctis about Iris, see how he’d react to a girl-child.

Lost in his thoughts as he threw his workout gear into his locker, exchanging the rucksack for his schoolbooks and his chickenscratch handwriting in his notebooks. Lost and a little conflicted as he headed toward one of the lecture halls for his morning study sessions, his feet on the move and his mind trying to keep pace, and he pushed open the door and thought he was entirely alone, until he reached out without thinking at all, for the nearest set of switches for the overhead lights -- 

He was alone, he thought he was alone in the entire school, he hadn’t heard a step or a voice or --

But he wasn’t alone.

Oh.

“Uh.” A meaningless sound. 

He stared, and tried to speak, and he did manage to say “Sorry.”

But he had no idea what to think, when he realized what he was looking at.

Up to the very last row in the lecture hall, steps toward the cloud-darkened windows and immediately below the one that lit up in crashing lightning was --

Wilted white collar and a neat knot in a red tie, and light-colored hair falling into closed eyes.

But those eyes didn’t remain closed for long, and too late, Gladio switched off the overheads.

Not quickly enough: the last sparking flash of sickly pale light catching on a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles.

Wire-rimmed spectacles belonging to the boy in the back row.

Movement of a bowed head.

Of a compact form stirring into movement.

Lightning, again, enough for Gladio to see by, in the flash as Ignis Scientia straightened from where he had been sitting and sleeping with his hands carefully and neatly folded together atop a stack of books, atop the scant table-space. His shoulders and his knees, coming out of what was almost a slouch, the lines of his body gone alert and oddly soft at the same time. His feet uncrossing at the ankles.

“I am awake.” 

“Yeah?” Gladio asked. “Sorry. Go back to sleep. I’ll get lost, go somewhere else.”

“No need. I have to study, too. What time is it?”

Gladio snapped to attention. Fumbled for his phone. Controls for the flashlight, and the screen with the digital clock. “Quarter to six.”

“So late?”

The last word lost in the crash of thunder.

“Actually it’s pretty early. Looks bad out, is all. Storm,” Gladio heard himself say, and felt completely unnecessary.

“I can hear it.”

By the bright beam of the flashlight he watched Ignis scrub at his eyes with his knuckles -- then make an impatient sound, before he tried to put his shirt-sleeves back in order.

“You do this every morning?” he asked.

“No. Not -- not always,” he heard Ignis say. “But I couldn’t sleep last night. I was thinking about examinations. Mine begin next week. Yours?”

“Same.” He dropped, carefully, onto the wide step of the floor, next to Ignis’s feet. Cold tiles, and the clack of the metal ridges screwed into the floor, anti-slip protection and also a serious tripping hazard.

“We will be very busy,” Ignis said. “Because Noctis will start going to school in a month’s time. I think they’ll ask us to come and help him then.”

“That’s more you than me if they give him -- homework.”

“Yes. That’s true.” Was that a small smile? “I am sure I can manage addition and subtraction, when he gets to that point. And -- coloring books.”

Gladio laughed. “Shit, you’re right. I -- I should pay attention to what you do. Iris,” he said. “She’s a baby, right now, and it won’t take long before she’s going to start -- doing things.”

Quiet laugh from Ignis’s direction. “Oh, so that was you,” he said. “They were talking about a baby girl. Your sister. Iris?”

“Yeah. Come visit her sometime.” 

He didn’t know what made him say, “I was helping feed her. Wound up carrying a bottle of her milk all the way here. Not like she can use it.”

“It shows that her brother is thinking of her,” Ignis said.

“I do.”

“Maybe Noctis is the closest I will get to that.”

Gladio looked over at him.

Soft look in those eyes behind the spectacles.

“You’ll do fine,” he heard himself say, quietly.

Still he sounded too loud to his own ears, or was that just his heartbeat? Could Ignis hear his heartbeat? That was -- a thought that almost made him squirm.

“I hope so.”

Ringing clacking steps all the way down, as he watched Ignis navigate to the front of the classroom using his own phone.

Flash of the overhead lights coming back to life.

The lights that threw harsh lines into his face, into the round shapes of his spectacles.

Next to the teacher’s desk, Ignis paused.

Gladio watched him link his fingers together at chest level -- then stretch, up, palms pointed towards the ceiling, poised up on his toes --

He looked like he was trying his hardest to -- to fly. 

Gladio closed his eyes and still saw that curve, and it was now imprinted on his mind.

“I know you’ll be good,” he heard himself say.

And he didn’t know what he was saying, didn’t know why he was saying these things.

After all, Ignis was Ignis, self-contained, as he had been even in his sleep. 

Steps, again, heading his way.

He looked up at the touch on his shoulder: Ignis’s hand, warm, firm. “It’s good to know you believe in me.”

“I do,” Gladio said, and that was something he wouldn’t take back, that was something he couldn’t have any second thoughts about. 

That was something he believed. 

His reward was Ignis, smiling, and murmuring: “Thank you.” 

He had a nice smile, a little sharp and a little strange, a little lopsided.

The line of his mouth, the tilt of his head: that, too, stayed with Gladio.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on Tumblr at my FFXV sideblog [@ninemoons42-lestallumhaven](http://ninemoons42-lestallumhaven.tumblr.com/) or at my main [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
